Loy Loy Krathong

October 31 - November 3

Loy Krathong is one of the big festivals of the year in Thailand, especially in the north. We'd seen pictures of a part of the festival early in our planning for Thailand, and made it a goal to be in Chiang Mai for the festival.

There are several traditions associated with Loy Krathong, but the one about the sky lanterns is what interested us. In the far north (where the festival is also called Yi Peng), people make miniature hot air balloons (called khom loy) out of paper and a burning wick, and float them into the sky at night. As the lantern floats away, so does your bad luck. Each year, at Mae Jo University near Chiang Mai, they do a mass release of thousands of these sky lanterns, and I wanted to try and experience that. In my research, I found out that this holiday occurs on the night of the full moon in the 12th lunar month. In 2009, that puts it on the evening of November 2, so we began planning our trip around that.


Later on in the research, I found out that the mass launch does not occur on the first day of the festival, but on the Saturday preceding - except when Loy Krathong is on Sunday, in which case the mass launch happens one week earlier. However, this year Loy Krathong starts on a Monday instead of Sunday and it wasn't clear if the rule to move the mass launch up a week would apply. Information on this was scant, and we didn't know if we should try to be there for Oct 24 or Oct 31, and then I found out there was a rumor that it was canceled due to swine flu concerns. Danny had been studying Thai for a couple weeks, and was able to call the TAT (Tourism Authority of Thailand) office and ask for someone who speaks English so we could get a definite answer as to the date and the status of the event. They told us that it would have been Oct 24, but it was canceled due to the swine flu. While this didn't necessarily mean that it would truly not happen, it caused us to scrap our plans to try and attend the group launch. It was unlikely anyhow that we'd be able to be ready to leave LA in order to make a flight before Oct 24, and we didn't want to make the sacrifices necessary (several all-nighters and not being able to say goodbye to friends) in order to try and attend something that was probably canceled. Instead, I put out some posts on Thai bulletin boards looking for tourists who would like to try and do a small group launch together.

The other traditions for Loy Krathong are the ones more widely practiced in Thailand: the floating of the Krathong down a river, and fireworks. A krathong is a miniature raft traditionally made out of the stalk of a banana palm and decorated with folded banana palm leaves and flowers. For a while (more recently), they were also made out of styrofoam, but that's discouraged in favor of the traditional method, or the alternative of bread. Additionally, the Krathong has a candle and three "joss sticks", kind of like the punk sticks that we use for fireworks. Usually, you'll also put some hair or fingernail clippings in it and a coin as an offering to the river goddess. Similar to the sky lanterns, the krathong is supposed to relieve you of bad things - bad luck, anger, grudges, etc, and allow you to have a fresh start. You also get to make a wish as you launch the krathong.

Although the actual night of the full moon was Nov 2, celebrations started several nights before, and continued for a night after. We were out on Oct 31, and as we approached the Tha Phae Gate, we could see some lanterns being launched. Since we were trying to have the group launch the next day, we figured we should try one tonight to see how it works, plus it would be fun. The lantern itself is a cylinder of paper, closed a the top and open at the bottom. There's a thin ring of bamboo that makes the circular opening in the bottom, and a wire crosspiece that provides the location for the wax-soaked wick to be tied to.

Inside of a sky lantern, from Thailand 2009 - Loy Krathong

The wick was slow to light, but it burned well, and our first launch was successful. Hanging around the gate area for a while we were able to see what later became common disasters. Sometimes people would release the lantern a bit early, before the wick was fully lit or before there was enough hot air. This would cause the lantern to go up a little, and then fall back into the crowd, and some people would run away from it while the launchers or other bystanders would run after it and try to catch it. Other times, someone might not hold the lantern carefully while it was heating up and the paper sides would catch fire and the whole thing would burn out quickly. The final common problem was that the lantern would fly up and then get tangled in a tree, or power lines, or an antenna. I never saw this lead to any problems, but there was a big power outage one of the nights. I have heard that there were fires in Bangkok due to the sky lanterns.* With all the old wooden temples and houses, this seems like it would be a regular occurrence rather than the exception.
*[The tradition of releasing sky lanterns on Loy Krathong used to be practiced solely in the north, but has recently spread to the other major cities in Thailand as well. The news reported that this is a problem, because while places like Chiang Mai have restrictions on when and where sky lanterns can be released, Bangkok hasn't instituted any such restrictions yet, and in fact the Bangkok airport was shut down for several hours because of stray lanterns on the runway. In Chiang Mai, the officials know better and there are no flights scheduled after 9pm during the festival. --Danny]

Our first launch, from Thailand 2009 - Loy Krathong

Another common practice is to tie a firework to the lantern - the vendors sell a special firework for this with a long fuse, a couple of poppers, and a firework that makes a shower of sparks which looks very pretty in the night sky. While we were watching at the gate, a few guys got the idea to tie 4 firecrackers to the lantern. This made the lantern way too heavy, so instead of floating up into the sky, it scraped across the ground through the crowd. No one wanted to approach it because it had 4 lit fuses, so we all watched it struggle to rise. After some of the fireworks had gone off it lightened up enough that it could float away.

A couple of people had responded regarding the group launch, but no one had definitively said they could make it. However, I heard from an Australian video producer that she was putting together her own group launch on the same day for a music video, and that it would be great if I could join in and bring whoever I could. That sounded fun, so we planned to gather anyone who showed up to our spot and then meet up with here. Well, no one showed up that I could tell, although I'm not sure I'd be able to tell. The spot I picked was a big open area on the satellite which was the parking area for a temple. On the first real day of the Loy Krathong celebrations, the monks were helping groups of tourists who showed up to launch lanterns. So if anyone showed up looking for a launch, they would have found that.

We waited a bit at our designated location and then went over to the music video producer's site by the river for the group launch. This turned out to be slightly confusing because the Australians only spoke a bit of Thai and most of the people they had helping were locals. They did have a translator (from one of the local cooking schools), but she was only one person trying to herd a group of 40 or so in a noisy environment where other, uninvolved people were launching lanterns, krathongs, and fireworks. She managed to pull it off though, we got all the lanterns lit and launched together with only one problem - the telephone company's main cellular transceiver happened to be directly downwind from the launch area, and the trajectory of the lanterns caused several of them to wrap themselves around the transceivers and the support structure. Oops. They did a couple more launches to get more footage. We launched with a couple more and then called it a night. I noticed the next day that the antenna tower had been cleaned of all lanterns.

Group launch, from Thailand 2009 - Loy Krathong

As we were wandering around that night, we visited the Tha Phae Gate again (which was considerably more crowded than the night before), and were accosted by a group of Thai teenagers in matching bright pink golf shirts as we passed through the gate. They formed into a conga-like line and mimed for us to join in. We did, and followed them as they danced around the corner out of the flow of people and then sang a song in Thai we'd been hearing all night (and would hear for the next couple days). I don't know what the name of the song is, or what it's about, but the refrain goes "Loy loy krathong, loy krathong". Afterward, they laughed and thanked us and gave us some wooden bead bracelets. We gave them some stickers and then wandered on.

Earlier in the week we'd visited Three Kings Square, and they were hanging up rows of paper lanterns of a different kind in a rainbow of colors. On one of the nights of Loy Krathong, we decided to go back and see how it turned out. When we arrived, the previously empty plaza was filled with people. One half of it was devoted to a food court with stalls serving a variety of snacks and meals, some that we'd never seen before and assume are regional or hill tribe specialties. When I say stall, that usually means it's a 5 foot square place with a single person running a propane burner or a small charcoal grill with a spread of what they're offering in front. The larger operations might span several booths, and they'll have 5 or 6 trays of treats or several kettles of soups or curries. On the other side of the plaza, they were having a number of performances - dancers, drummers, and singers in very colorful costumes.

Decorations at the Three Kings Plaza, from Thailand 2009 - Loy Krathong

On the second and third nights of Loy Krathong, the celebrations were even wilder. Looking up in the sky from the roof of our hotel, the constant flow of sky lanterns was enough to map out the wind currents in the sky. It's hard to convey the feeling, let alone the peaceful beauty of it, but it made the sky seem more like a living volume than just dimensionless air. It felt like I might have been underwater watching a huge school of glowing jellyfish float by.

In addition to the larger numbers of khom loy, the fireworks were getting more intense. We took our krathongs to the riverbank to launch them, and it was a war zone in miniature. People on the bridge were launching fireworks, along with people on the bank of the river. Sometimes the fireworks would misfire and go off on the ground, sending everyone scrambling.

We launched our krathong and then immediately had to defend it. There were young kids in the river (maybe 6 to 10 years old) rooting through the krathongs looking for the coins that people put in. Additionally, there was a small dock that stuck out into the river, and the krathongs were piling up on the side of it. We had to push our krathongs out far enough that it would pass by the kids and clear the dock. Danny found the remnants of a fireball shooting stick and used that to good effect. This got them a little further at least.

Krathongs in the river, from Thailand 2009 - Loy Krathong

The second and third nights also had big parades. There was a separate theme each night, but I couldn't really tell what it was. Some of the floats were quite impressive. Not as big as the New Orleans Mardi Gras floats, but easily as decorated and lit up, if not more so. Some of them referenced things that we recognized like the white deer, or the three kings, or the king's boat, or a big fancy krathong. There were also marching bands, hill tribe drummers, re-enactments of historical combats, traditional costumes, and beauty queens.

Parade float, from Thailand 2009 - Loy Krathong

As I've mentioned, the vendors were selling fireworks every night, and kids and adults were buying them up and shooting them off everywhere, even in the middle of the road. We ramped up our own fireworks each night in tandem with the festivities. One of our favorites was these homemade looking ones on the end of a long flexible stick (maybe twice as long as a bottle rocket). You would hold the end of the stick away from the firework, light the fuse, and then twirl your arm and release the firework. The firework trails a small shower of orange sparks, so it makes a pretty streak as it flies over the river. I think these were 10 Baht for a bundle of 6, so about 5 cents each. Another favorite was the screaming UFO. This was a triangular disc that you'd set on the ground (ideally a flat rock) and light a corner. When ignited it spins around very fast and makes a screaming noise. If it works well, it will fly up into the air about 20 or so feet and then explode. If not, it'll shoot off into the crowd or just fizzle.

The final favorite were the mortars, of which we only got the one shot variety. There's a cardboard tube with a small charge in the base that launches a fused shell into the air which explodes into what you typically see on the 4th of July - a big sparkly star. The bigger the tube, the bigger the bang. The first night we were buying fireworks and we'd asked one of the vendors if she had anything bigger. She got all secretive looking and whispered "big big?" We said yes, and she moved her tablecloth a little and showed us that she did indeed have a big big (about 2 feet tall) firework hidden away. I hadn't seen anyone selling or using something that large, so we wondered - was something that big legal? If it wasn't, I probably couldn't carry it past the police station to the riverbank where we'd had a good spot to launch things. So we declined and got the smaller ones. The last night, we went back and hers was gone, but now all of the vendors had big ones, and openly displayed. Maybe they're just not allowed on the first night? We shopped around and then haggled, and got a big big one. Rather than taking it back to the riverbank like the others, we launched it in what seemed to be the local style - by taking it on the bridge, waiting for a break in traffic and lighting it right in the middle of the road. With all the fireworks and flaming lanterns going on, you'd think it would be hard to keep an eye on everything that's going on, but you really don't have to. You're watching one direction, but there are other people right near you watching every other direction. So when I lit the fuse, within seconds, an open space almost the entire width of the bridge cleared out. Schoomf.......Boom!
[Unfortunately, we were too excited about the big firework to remember to take a picture. Use your imagination, but it was impressively large. Once Ryan set it down and lit the fuse, the crowd immediately cleared out for 20-30 feet in all directions!] --Danny

Fireworks, from Thailand 2009 - Loy Krathong

It was quite a festival, and an auspicious beginning to the trip.

More Photos...